There are several methods for cooling fresh fruits and vegetables. Among them, one of the oldest is ice cooling. This ancient method involves an elderly woman with a giant basket balanced on her head. She would hike up the mountain thousands of feet to find the perfect ice. Then she would hack chunks of ice off and put them into her basket. Next, she runs down the hill, basket on head, all the way to the valley. Hopefully there was enough ice left to cool the harvested fruits and vegetables. Finally, the crop was placed in the ice, which warmed it until melting. Continue reading →
Agriculture, Technology, and the importance of Precooling
Agriculture is a global industry and is as old as civilization itself. Technology has allowed the transport of perishable crops thousands of miles away from the farm the produce was harvested from. Today, the agriculture industry sees numerous benefits from technology, including flying drones for monitoring crops; autonomous driving tractors with GPS; and automated precooling.
Precooling can be understood as rapidly removing heat from perishable goods and commodities.
Precooling is an important part of the postharvest stage of agriculture. Anytime shelf life is a concern, precooling or otherwise slowing the senescence (aging) of the fruit or vegetable is critical. The moment the fruit leaves the plant, it begins to deteriorate. Studies show that product quality and shelf life can be extended dramatically by precooling.
Do you need some info for the HP Stream 7 to help determine if you should purchase one? Maybe you already own an HP Stream 7 but want to know more about the quirks of that cheap tablet PC. A new website might handle these concerns for you.
In addition to occasionally writing for fizmarble.com, I play in a band. I write, record, and produce music. I depend on my various PCs for this and also among other things, an audio interface.
For years I used a Presonus Firepod (Later called the FP10) generously donated by my friend Jaret. It originally cost quite a bit (450-600 dollar range), and so I didn’t hesitate to pay the $100 repair fee when it eventually crapped out.
It took me from Windows Vista to Windows 7 and eventually Windows 8 on the same desktop PC. It worked beautifully on Windows 8 by the way, but the desktop was ~6 years old by this time, and a failing hard drive and old hardware beckoned me to upgrade to a new PC, a PC with *gasp* Windows 8.
My unsupported Presonus Firebox and Firepod
Of course I didn’t think twice about the Presonus Firepod’s compatibility with the Windows 8 PC. After all, I had been using the Firepod on Windows 8 for several months on my older, upgraded PC. Why would the new PC behave any different?
Ahh, poor, poor ignorance. Little did I know that the “great” minds at Presonus would be so cunning, so conniving. Whereas my Firepod worked fantastically with Windows 8 when it was upgraded from Windows 7 with the Firepod driver already installed, installing the driver on a Windows 8 PC was a different story altogether. No no, poor ignorance, Presonus had behind the scenes altogether blocked their driver installer from even running on a Windows 8 PC. So, if you had the driver installed first and then upgraded to Windows 8, you’re golden. If on the other hand you ignorantly try to install the Firepod/FP10 driver on Windows 8, you will receive a popup from Presonus telling you that the driver is not supported on your Operating System.
Gee Presonus, if you wanted me gone, why didn’t you just say so? This is how you support your customers? By forcibly blocking the driver installer from working on a modern OS. This ensures that customers need to upgrade. But if you think this customer is going to upgrade to another Presonus product, you have sorely miscalculated.
Instead, a reasonably priced and very stable audio interface now sits on my desktop where once sat the Firepod/FP10. Now, an Avid Fast Track C600 processes my audio, including the recordings of Twiztid praising the demise of Presonus in a chorus unfit to print here.
Cheaper, and with a smaller footprint too.
If you are in the same boat, check out the Fast Track C600. Amazon has them for a pretty sweet deal (duh), and Presonus can say they have taken my last dollar. Now, let’s make some music!
Update: Reader Alex has shared in the comments section a workaround to the installer issue. Follow his method if you want to keep that Presonus pumping out the jams. He writes:
1. Download the “FireBox Installer v5.13 – PC” from their website (http://www.presonus.com/support/downloads/firebox)
2. Right click on the downloaded file “PreSonus_FireBox_Installation.exe” and choose “Properties”
3. Click on “Compatibility” tab
4. Check “Run this program in compatibility mode for:” and select “Windows 7″
5. Click on “OK” and run the installer again and it should work this time and install all the drivers flawlessly
Today I received a phone call from a person (woman?) with an Indian accent claiming to be with Microsoft. She said that they had received reports from my computer that showed that I had been the victim of “online infections”. These “infections” would need to be dealt with and this cold calling savior was there to rescue me.
Unfortunately for these scammers, I am actually a CompTIA A+ certified computer technician, and I was on to them from the moment they claimed to know something about my computer. Here’s how the scam works, and how to protect yourself.
At work, I was recently upgraded to a new laptop. My former laptop was no slouch in its day, but nearly 4 years later it had started to show signs of aging. For perspective, I was using a Dell Inspiron 1720 with an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU (2 cores at 2.5 GHz) and 3.5 GB of RAM.
Since this is for work, and the work I do is primarily programming of various sorts. I needed a number cruncher. This isn’t a gaming rig, so it won’t be reviewed as one, but for those looking for a process driven setup, rather than a graphic driven one, you should find this helpful.Continue reading →
Kinect for Xbox 360 has always asked more from you than traditional video games have. If you want your character to jump, you have to jump. If you want them to kick in a door, you have to kick.
Some games have provided calorie counters for all of this hard work we do. But these calorie trackers are typically reserved for fitness oriented games like YourShape, and Dance Central.
Now available as a free app for all Xbox Live members, PlayFit will track your calories and playtime independently from your fitness games.
From the press release:
Kinect PlayFit is a new fitness dashboard that aggregates and tracks the calories you burn as you play a variety of Kinect games, from “Dance Central 2” to “Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2012” to “Kinect Star Wars.”
Kinect PlayFit lets you view your personal stats over time and see leaderboards that show how you rank against Xbox LIVE members across the globe. Get credit for the calories you burn while having fun with Kinect, and earn Kinect PlayFit Achievements, Gamerscore and Avatar Awards.
Kinect PlayFit inspires an active and healthy lifestyle through fun and play:
First of Its Kind – This is the first ever fitness tracking application on a video game console.
Social Motivation – Kinect PlayFit keeps it social with activity challenges, rankings on leaderboards and integration with the Xbox LIVE community to break a sweat together.
Survey Says – According to a recent survey*nearly 75 percent of respondents believe that video games should include a component that encourages physical activity. Also, 70 percent said that physically active video games can complement or supplement traditional exercise.
So go ahead and weild that light saber in Kinect Star Wars. And kick balls in Kinect Adventure. And when your spouse/children/parents/partner tells you to quit playing those silly games, you can tell them you are exercising, and have the calorie count to back it up.
When we first heard of the Microsoft Surface, it was a multi-thousand dollar device that we would use to play parlor games and pay our restaurant bill with.
But Microsoft today revealed, in a mystery shrouded press conference, the near-future of personal computing. Creation, and consumption, all done on one multi-touch device running Windows 8, the next version of Microsoft’s operating system. Continue reading →
After receiving a facebook request today to “enable the facebook ‘dislike’ button”, my first thought was, “I want to dislike this.” You know, to be a punk. But then I started to think that maybe there was more to this than what the surface reflected. So I dove into the internet searching for “facebook dislike button” and it didn’t take long to reveal news of a recent scam to propogate malicious code.
